The answer is: Merv, Movies & "Jeopardy"

It's always depressing when any kind of foreign or even Amerian independent cinema question is asked on Jeopardy! It proves once again that cinema is simply not even considered a field of knowledge worth studying. Even people who never read books know who Shakespeare, Twain and Dickens are. And most people with even a casual interest in literature know about James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon. But even people who would identify themselves as "movie people" will stare blankly at the mention of such "obscure" names as Jean-Luc Godard or Jim Jarmusch.

Cinema is a very specialized field of knowledge, downright hermetic in fact.

I remember seeing one where there was a whole category on Orson Welles. The second question was something along the lines of "Orson Welles stars as Harry Lime in this 1949 thriller set in Vienna," and the only person who answered said "The Magnificent Ambersons."

The one that surprised me was Das Boot. I mean, c'mon that movie was a huge hit and produced a, gulp, dubbed version that was so popular on video and cable I can barely think of it as a foreign film at all. How could they have missed that?

And again, as for Breathless, The Seventh Seal and 8 1/2 these are not exactly "obscure" foreign films. I mean, it's not like they were being asked about Lang's Dr. Mabuse trilogy or something.

But I think Christopher may be on to something. It is a bad habit of mine to assume if it is known to most people who love cinema than it must be known to the average joe as well which is almost always wrong. And hey, there are thousands upon thousands of films out there so there are still many highly regarded ones that most cinephiles have not seen yet, let alone a non-cinephile.

But, nevertheless, all of those questions strike me as covering the basics of foreign cinema so someone on Jeopardy shouldn't have had a problem - or so it would seem.

Jonathan

It was Eva Gabor that Merv 'dated' not Zsa Zsa.

Christopher nailed it. I personally look at things from the other perspective though, Jim. When I was trying to explain to someone how Kurosawa adapted Shakespeare into samurai movies (without using his name so as to not confuse them with an unfamiliar name), a person said to me "Oh really, Kurosawa did that too, did they take the idea from him or the other way around?" I was more floored that they knew who Kurosawa was than I am by people who don't know the (obvious) answers to the Jeopardy! questions.

In fact, a good example of people's general ignorance of foreign cinema is a few years ago a guy I was a general acquaintance with found out that I was considered the "movie guy" of my friends and family. So he asked me what the best movie of the year was and I said "It's a movie called 'Whale Rider'" and when he came back with a blank stare I said "It's from New Zealand, and it's about a girl..." well as soon as I mentioned it was from a country that wasn't America, he rolled his eyes and said "Ohhh..." As though I was one of those weird people that watched movies from not America. I was so completely pissed at his steadfast closemindedness that I almost snapped. However, I've since come to expect this "I don't like anything that doesn't represent me, and confirm my beliefs about myself" attitude from the majority of people, and am instead thrilled when someone is actually curious about things that aren't them.

These are for real? I thought they were warm-up questions. How sad.

I might have won at Jeopardy that day! Unfortunately my knowledge in other things isn't as strong.

Well, I went five for five, but had the subject been "Horticulture" or "Starlets In The News" I might have fared less well.

I'm guessing (I haven't looked at the rest of the article yet) that numbers 1 & 3 were the ones they got right. (I promise to press "submit" before checking to see if I'm right.)

Kyle, I've been surrounded by people like that my whole life, so much so that it seems far more the norm than being surrounded by the folks on this blog, a reality I'm so glad seems to be changing. So it's no surprise to me when the subject of movies gets treated with indifference or downright ignorance.

It's just foreign films that stump some people but the very concept of foreign films, particularly certain national cinemas. I had a conversation with someone just six months ago who was stunned to learn that Iranians make films. "I didn't think they were allowed to," was his response.

To those of us who love film in its many permutations it's hard to accept the fact that, outside of mass-marketed blockbusters*, cinema is a niche product.

*Or films sanctified by the AFI as "classics" which I would argue don't really belong in a separate category from "mass marketed blockbusters."

I got three out of five and I was going as fast as possible. I think most of the commentators expectations are a little too high. How, exactly, are non-film majors (or not critics) supposed to know about these movies? They aren't usually on cable, they don't play at the movies, and you can't rent them at Family Video. You can read about movies all you want, but you won't remember them until you see them. The titles in the last two questions were vaguely familiar, but a person could spend years watching movies every day and never get around to French new wave.

Hey I had to check, but by just guessing, I at least got the genre right. I'll take The Rapists for 500.

Oops. The show Fenwick watches is, of course, "College Bowl." His four answers (might be out of order):

"The Sun doesn't rise on Mercury."

"A black eye."

"Thoreau."

"Heroditus."

And his riposte:

"Hey, Cornell. Take a walk, you bozos."

Andy:

I'd almost let it fly, but none of these movies are precisely obscure. I would go so far as to say they'd be among the first anyone with basic knowledge of foreign film would think of when excluding modern foreign films.

Besides, these are Jeopardy! contestants, not random schmucks off the street. They should have at least a broad enough knowledge of the arts to get by in a game of Trivial Pursuit (wherein the first rule is to go with your reflex answer on almost everything).

Ken has it right.

Not knowing that some Godard guy made some film called Breathless is the equivalent of not knowing that Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn, or that Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.

I do not conclude from this that people are stupid, or that these Jeopardy! contestants were stupid. Rather, the obvious conclusion is that cinema is simply not taught, and not even valued in American culture (and most likely most other cultures.)

Despite the fact that people talk about "the movies" more than they talk about books or art, the level of film knowledge in the culture is vastly lower. Obviously, a big part of this is because film isn't taught in school unless one actually goes to film school.

Cinema is much more like opera in America. If you don't specifically follow it, you probably don't know squat about it. Despite the fact that you go to "the movies" all the time. Which is really the weird part of it for me.

I'm not say this is good or bad, it's just the way it is.

Godard, Truffaut, Bergman, Fellini - those are some of the first names I learned when I started gaining an interest in foreign film. And even before I had seen their films, I could have told you that Godard made "Breathless, Fellini made "8 1/2", etc. And I'm not a film student or a critic - just a 19-year-old with an interest in film.

So no, you don't have to to be a film student or critic to know that there is a world outside your local megaplex/Blockbuster - just reading a few of Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" essays would help one to realize that. And heck, even my local Hollywood Video carries "The Seventh Seal" and "Breathless" in its Foreign section.

And here are people, who are obviously quite bright, who seem to be ignorant of some of the most important directors and films in cinematic history. I don't think anyone is calling the contestants (or the general public) stupid, but wondering why it is that the vast majority of people - even those who are well-versed in the other arts - seemingly have no interest in expanding their cinematic horizons a little bit.

I guess I should say before I start here that I have not seen Breathless, or any Godard film in fact. I’m a reasonably well-educated and intelligent fellow, and have seen a fair number of foreign films – just not these. And I don’t think I’m really disagreeing with the previous commenters’ conclusions. But it seems to me a little specious to compare knowledge of Breathless as comparable to knowledge of Huckleberry Finn or the “Mona Lisa”. I (and most people I know) read Huckleberry Finn in high school – Godard never even came up there. And most everyone knows that Da Vinci painted the “Mona Lisa” … well, as soon as they’re old enough to read Dan Brown. :)

As for relative weight in they’re respective artistic fields, I’d say the “Mona Lisa” is a little more essential, and Huckleberry Finn -- well, it’s American, about as quintessential an American book as there is. But more to the point – literature is on a different plain of awareness, because it’s more incorporated into the educational system.

Let me give an analogy that seems more to the point to me, from my own field, which is music. Imagine an “audio daily double” where the contestants are informed that the percussive nature of the work they are hearing by Pierre Boulez is also reflected in the name of the piece (if you’d like to hear part of it, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7Vc_mo_dqE ). How many people would be able to identify Le marteau sans maitre (The Hammer Without a Master), one of the more important works of classical music of the 20th century? It’s probably the only work of Boulez that the casual listener might have heard of, was written around the same time as Breathless (1954, I believe) in the same country, incorporating some fairly revolutionary processes. And I would guess that very few Jeopardy! contestants would get this right either.

Not that I would expect a lot of people to get this right. I know how little classical music is taught in the US, and how it is becoming increasingly the case that it needs to be taught in order for it to be heard. As with films, there is a large body of “popular” works that people are primarily familiar with. I would guess that a typical 30-year-old, if asked to name the “classics” in music, would suggest the Beatles or Michael Jackson (in film, I suppose you would get Raiders or Star Wars. Of course, there is popular literature too. But again, the classics of literature are something people are required to read in school (and sometimes, shockingly, they find that they’re pretty enjoyable too). Music and film, for the most part, do not have this place in the educational canon.

In part, this may be a matter of tradition. Even when music was one of the seven liberal arts, it was still music theory that was being studied, not so much specific works. Film has the disadvantage of being a fairly new medium, although it can also be seen as an outgrowth of theater, which has as long as a history as literature or music. More to the point, though, I think a fair number of people (intellectual as well as others) see literature as being primarily an area of ideas, while music and film are seen as primarily about feelings. And there’s something to that – I think that music and film both have an intellectual side to them, but after seeing a film (or listening to a piece of music), which question seems to get more to the heart of the experience – “What did that movie make you think about?” or “How did that movie make you feel?”

Several years ago I applied for a teaching position where the first question I was asked in my interview was, “Does music have any place in the higher education curriculum?” The man who asked the question brought up the example of a friend who found music too manipulative, making you feel things that you didn’t want to feel – why should anyone be obliged to be “informed” about such a thing? Now, I don’t think it was seriously being questioned here – I think they just wanted a provocational starting point (I was exhausted at the time and answered rather poorly). But I think this friend’s standpoint is not far from that of many educated people, seeing music (or film, or the visual arts) as optional, important for the enjoyment of life, perhaps, but not essential knowledge. And who wants to be manipulated? Or course, who would read Cicero then – you might get manipulated reading that too! Ah, but there the trained mind can work it’s way through the rhetoric to what really makes sense in an argument. Why, then, do we seem to feel less inclined to train our feelings? If a person feels her emotions truly being manipulated by a piece of music, to the point of feeling things the person doesn’t want to feel, isn’t this a sign that the person’s feelings need more training? It seems similar to the wonder of a child at hearing the New World Symphony for the first time, or seeing E.T. for the first time (or perhaps reading Cicero for the first time). I treasure all of those from my childhood years (well, OK, I didn’t read any Cicero when I was a kid, but I read other persuasive writings), and wouldn’t wish to forget the experience of my emotions being bent in multiple directions. But as I’ve aged, I’ve learned to feel the emotion of the work without “taking it home with me”, as I might be able to analyze an emotional argument logically. In some ways, I miss that feeling of a film getting inside you, although it seems to me that this adjustment is part of the experience of being human. And if an adult really has that kind of problem dealing with feelings brought about through a work of art, perhaps it’s a sign that the person really needs more of an artistic education, to bring an ability to understand and deal with those emotions, and understand (at least to some extent) what’s causing them. It sounds like Tolstoy’s “Kreutzer Sonata” come to life.

So I guess all of this is just saying that film (and music) deserve a place in everyone’s educational curriculum, not just for their intellectual qualities, but also in helping us understand what we feel. Rather long-winded, and not terribly revolutionary – and who knows if it will ever really happen.

Weigard,

Great post. I think we're in complete agreement except maybe on the "essential" nature of "Breathless" in cinema. In terms of the field of cinema, I would argue that if one has only "heard of" five movies, "Breathless" ought to be one of them. Less arguably, I would assert that if you have only "heard of" five directors, Godard sure as heck should be one of them. Thus I'm going to stand by comparison to "Huck Finn" and the "Mona Lisa."

But I agree with you on all the reasons. I don't think not knowing the Godard question makes one stupid or ignorant. It just reflects the fact that film has no place whatsoever in the world of education. And I think your music example is apt - I couldn't have answered that question though of course I know who Pierre Boulez is - he's the guy that wrote "Planet of the Apes." :)

I believe that those of us who follow film closely think of it as being more like literature and art in terms of its "cultural awareness" but it is really more like opera or classical music. A tiny field with its fanatical devotees, but one that hasn't made any kind of breakthrough to mainstream awareness or even relevance.

I think Christopher hit the point right on the head. It was also the point I was trying to make, but failed. I recently took a Humanities class in college. The chapter for film mentioned mostly Americans, with a a little bit of lip service to Fellini and Truffaut. Most descriptions I’ve read of Truffaut begin with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Apparently he also made some movies.

I response to Tim C.: I’m also just a 20-year old with an interest in film. Your local video store may have a “foreign section” but none near me do. That’s part of my frustration. I read about these wonderful films with little opportunity to actually see them.

P.S. Since when are Jeopardy contestants supposed to be well-rounded geniuses? It’s TV. There may be a difficult process to actually get on the show, but it ain’t brain surgery. There would only be about three shows a year.

All right, I'm going to have to add this to my must see list -- it's getting awfully long. :)

Andy -

I can certainly sympathize with your frustrations. Nowadays, I tend to take for granted that most people have some access to foreign and classic films, even though just a few years ago I was in a position just like yours. (I can remember how overjoyed I was to find a VHS copy of "Au Revoir, Les Enfants" at the video store nearest my house - the only foreign film in the store that wasn't "Life is Beautiful" or martial-arts.) I've since been lucky enough to find a few places within reasonable distance of my home that carry many of the films I am interested in, but considering the scarcity of such resources around here, I can imagine there being lots of areas that have no resources at all for finding such films.

However, if you live in the United States, have you considered Netflix? As a student I've rarely had enough money to subscribe to it, but those months that I have had it I was very pleased with their service and their selection of movies. I realize that it isn't an option for some, but if you can get it I'd recommend it.

And I agree that most Jeopardy contestants are not "well-rounded geniuses" - but in my (admittedly, very limited) experience watching the show, the contestants do seem to have a wider knowledge of the arts and history than your average person on the street. Perhaps, not, as I stated, "well-versed in the arts", but they do seem to be quite a bit more culturally aware than your average person. But, once again, my experience with the show has been quite limited, so I may be wrong in my assumptions about the intelligence of the contestants.

Boy, I've had a lot of responses on this thread, but it combines two of my favorite things - movies and Jeopardy!

FWIW, I just dug out my copy of "How to Get on Jeopardy and Win!" It contains extensive sections of facts/trivia questions based on the show's content in order to help potential contestants prepare.

There is a 27 page Literature section.

There is a 20 page "Fine Arts" section which includes: 7 pages on Dance, 6 pages on Opera, and 4 pages on "Art Movements."

There is no film section. Under the "History" section I found three foreign film questions:

This is considered the first spaghetti Western.

This man directed the first spaghetti Western.

These French brothers made the first color film.

I did find a rather obscure film question that I think they got wrong.

The first animated film is identified as "Gertie the Dinosaur" (1914). But WIndsor McCay had already done a "Little Nemo" animated film in 1911, though it was framed by a live action story featuring him so I guess it depends on how you count it.

So I guess the lesson is: Jeopardy! writers just don't like foreign film that much.

That explains everything!

Jeopardy! contestants are better versed in trivia than the average person, but the fact remains that the show's questions skew heavily towards American trivia. Anyone studying to be on Jeopardy! is going to start by memorizing all the presidents of the USA, then they might move on to American and world geography, followed by current events, which may or may not include films.

My point is, contestants study to be on the show, and it's not their fault that the show doesn't have more questions about foreign films.